‘I still can’t believe it’: After 50 years without ace, golfer defies odds twice on Strand
Jim Fuddy’s expectations have risen on par-3 tee boxes over the past couple weeks.
“Every time I go to a par-3 now I’m thinking, ‘Hey, I could probably put this in,’ ” Fuddy said. “It’s pretty funny to be thinking about it.”
The 71-year-old Pennsylvania resident had never made a hole in one prior to a golf trip to Myrtle Beach with a group of friends two weeks ago.
Then on Oct. 27 and 28, he made aces in consecutive rounds on consecutive days at Long Bay Club and the King’s North Course at Myrtle Beach National.
“I still can’t believe it,” Fuddy said Monday. “I’ve only golfed for 50 years and I never had one, and I’ve golfed a couple times since then and I still haven’t had another one.”
The first hole in one came with an 8-iron from about 110 yards, and the second was a 6-iron from about 130 yards.
“I was very glad to buy everybody a drink after the first one, and I was glad that I had made arrangements with my wife to golf again [in the afternoon] so I didn’t have to buy everybody a drink the second day, I had to get going so we could get 18 holes in,” Fuddy said. “They’re good with it, they were glad to get their drinks on [Tuesday]. I don’t think there was much of an expectation to get drinks again on Wednesday.”
Fuddy was part of a group of 12 men that played a different course each day over a week.
For both of his aces he was in the middle tee time, with his friends in both the group ahead and group behind.
Both of them came on holes where the players chipped in for closest-to-the-pin payouts, and the group behind was on the tee box for the first one. “We were able to yell back to them, ‘Don’t worry about it, somebody’s in the hole,’ ” Fuddy said.
“My reaction was less than the other guys. The guys that were just getting off the hole when we got there, my group yelled to them and they started hootin’ and hollerin’, and the guys on the tee behind us were sort of hootin’ and hollerin’. I was still having a tough time believing it. . . . I could hardly believe it when I did it again. They couldn’t believe it either the second day. And I started thinking, ‘Hey, there’s nothing to this. Why should I be surprised? The ball went where I was aiming it.’ ”
Fuddy is a native of Hazelton and resident of Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. He’s a retired former director of social work and discharge planning at Hershey Medical Center.
He played baseball and football at Penn, and picked up other sports such as handball and racquetball afterward.
He plays a few days a week, generally with either his wife or regular groups and typically scores in the low 90s.
“Everything soft of came pretty easy for me, and I didn’t really think golf was a sport, until I tried golf,” Fuddy said. “It’s the toughest sport I ever played to get good at, and I never really got good at it. I’d say I’m an average golfer. I put the ball in play.
“ . . . In comparison to a lot of other people I’m not that good, that’s why two holes in one in two days is pretty amazing.”
The odds of an amateur making a hole in one is approximately 12,500 to 1, according to the National Hole In One Registry, and of making two in the same round is approximately 67 million to 1. So the odds of making one in two consecutive rounds is similarly nearly impossible.
Fuddy doesn’t have either hole-in-one ball. “They made me keep the ball but it’s been back in circulation so I don’t even have the ball,” he said. “I’m waiting on a certificate that Long Bay is going to send me and that will be enough.”
